


Knitting

by dishonestdreams



Series: Alphabet Challenge [11]
Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Blood, Dark, Horror, Lovecraftian, M/M, Monsters, Possible Character Death, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 12:53:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20426300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dishonestdreams/pseuds/dishonestdreams
Summary: Mikey doesn't want to go down to the basement





	Knitting

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently, I'm clearing out my WIP folder (I swear, I hadn't planned to!). This is the entry for K in my longstanding alphabet series (and seriously, if whoever gave me the prompt 'Knitting' thought I was going to do anything other than something horrific with it, then they clearly don't know me that well). Inspired in part by the Foo Fighters 'The Sky is a Neighbourhood' video.
> 
> Also claimed for entry the third in my 100 Fandoms challenge!

It’s too dark.

Mikey’s brain doesn’t always tell him the truth, he _knows_ that. He knows. Sometimes, he reads situations in ways that they’re not. Sometimes he reads _people_ in ways that they’re not. And, okay, sometimes things do get a little dark for a while. He gets that.

That’s not what he means. This is different.

_This_ is Mikey standing at the top of the basement stairs and not wanting to go down there.

“Gee?” he says, but it’s hopeless, and he knows before he even says it. Gerard hasn’t come up from the basement in three days. He hasn’t answered Mikey for the last seventeen hours, forty-two minutes and fifty-three seconds.

Mikey knows that too.

The thing is, Mikey knows this basement. Mikey’s spent more time down in this basement than some people would consider healthy. Mikey was never afraid of the basement the way that some little kids were. Even after he tripped when he was six and went facedown the entire flight of steps. He’d lost three teeth that day, but after they’d finished at the emergency room, their mom had taken them out for waffles, and Gerard had given half of his to Mikey because he’d thought Mikey looked like a zombie and needed to be fed extra waffles so that he wouldn’t eat anyone’s brains. Mikey remembers Gerard explaining it to their mom, wide eyed and earnest, and Mikey hadn’t said anything, because he’d wanted to eat Gerard’s waffle, even if it was covered in cream. Mikey likes waffles.

Anyway. He wasn’t afraid of this. Ever.

He takes a step forward, and the loose floorboard on the top step sinks beneath his foot, with the usual tell-tale creak that sounds louder than it normally does. Mikey winces.

“Coming down,” he says, because he feels like he ought to say something, and then he waits - one count, two, three.

There’s no answer.

The staircase feels longer than normal, it’s _definitely_ darker than normal and Mikey takes it more slowly than he usually would. One foot after another, careful step by careful step, until he’s onto solid floor again, and then he takes a deep breath.

It smells.

Not like usual; Gerard’s basement always smells, a mixture of stale sweat and old coffee and dirty sheets. Musty and mucky and _Gerard_. This is different. Mikey draws in another breath through his nose, slow and careful, because there’s a bitter-sweet scent in the air that sticks to his throat and makes him gag a little. He knows it, he’s smelled it before, but he can’t remember where.

“Gee?” he says again. There isn’t an answer (not that he was expecting one) but now that he’s down here, he can tell that it’s not as quiet as he thought it was. He can hear something. No, he can hear two somethings; a low mumbling that doesn’t sound like Gerard, but has to be, and a repetitive _click-clack_ that sounds like. Well, like something. 

Mikey scuffs the toe of his sneaker against the basement floor. He could go back upstairs. He could call Frankie. Or maybe Ray. Ray would know what to do.

Except. Except Ray and Frankie would want to know what was wrong with Gerard. They wouldn’t understand why Mikey hadn’t checked. They’d look at him, that way that people look at him when they think he might be sliding again. Like they know. Mikey fucking hates that look.

He has to check.

Gerard’s room is dark, darker than Mikey expects. Only the table lamp is turned on, and that seems dimmer than usual. The smell is stronger in here, strong enough to make Mikey’s eyes water, and he claps his hand over his mouth as bile rises, sickening and sour, to burn his tongue.

Gerard’s hunched over the desk, his back turned to Mikey. He is muttering, but Mikey can’t make out the words and there’s something off about it. Something in the rhythm, in the cadence.

Mikey’s spent his whole life listening to Gerard talk. Gerard doesn’t talk like that.

“Gee?” he says again, cautiously.

Gerard stops; his low mutters cutting out mid-sound as the _click-clack_ also falls silent. The quiet is oppressive and heavy, punctuated only by the harsh, heavy pant of Mikey’s own breath. Half of him wants to reach out to his brother, while the other half has him desperately scrambling for the door and he can’t move, frozen in indecision just inside the entrance to Gerard’s room.

Gerard turns, a stuttered and uncoordinated movement, like he feels unused to his own body, and Mikey’s throat locks up against a scream. Gerard’s paler than usual; white as the grave even in the dim light of the room except for the hollows around his eyes, but that isn’t what sets the fine tremor running through Mikey’s legs. Gerard’s eyes are gone, replaced with two burning white circles of starlight that shine with an uncanny light and burn like a flame against Mikey’s skin. He’s frozen in place, still torn between fight and flight and for a long moment they just stand there.

Then Gerard (_not Gerard!_) reaches out and Mikey stumbles back, blinking furiously against the spots dancing across his vision. He doesn’t get far.

“You’re not Gee,” he chokes out.

“Not exactly,” the thing wearing Gerard’s face says, and Mikey shudders, because it sounds like his brother, but it _doesn’t_. It’s wrong. He takes a step back without even thinking about it, and the not-Gerard clicks its tongue with a shake of its head.

“You shouldn’t have come down here,” it says. It tips its head to one side, those too, too bright eyes fixed on Mikey’s face, and Mikey’s head starts to pound sickeningly.

“I’ll go,” he says, too quickly and the not-Gerard shakes its head again.

“No,” it says; a slow, drawn-out consideration that makes Mikey’s skin crawl. “No, Mikey Way. You are here now, you should stay. With us.”

It flicks its fingers and Mikey jumps as the door swings closed behind him, the latch catching with an air of painful finality. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t want to look at the not-Gerard. He can’t tear his eyes away from the not-Gerard.

“Where’s Gerard?” he asks, and he wraps his fingers _tighttighttight_ around the hem of his t-shirt. The bite of taut cotton around his fingers is good; it’s grounding and Mikey needs it. He takes a deep breath, the first he’s taken since the not-Gerard turned around and immediately regrets it as his cloying smell that _now_ he recognises as decay floods his nostrils.

The not-Gerard bares its teeth; a cruel mimicry of Gerard’s usual smile that looks fucking _perverse_ on Gerard’s face. “Shhhhhhhhhh,” it hisses, low and sibilant, “Moments pass. We shall not lose to the fluidity of time for a Mikey Way.” It shifts forward, more of a shuffle than a step and twists its fingers in a complicated pattern that makes Mikey’s eyelid twitch as he tries to follow it. Instinctively, he takes another step back.

Or tries to, but he can’t lift his foot. His shoe is stuck, caught on what he assumes is something unidentifiable and sticky ingrained in Gerard’s carpet. Instinctively (_stupidly_) he looks down, and this time he can’t stop the scream from tearing free from his throat.

The threadbare carpet that was put down by their mom long before Gerard had claimed the basement room as his own is _writhing_ around his feet. Around, not under, because threads have already extended to wrap over the tops of his sneakers and, even as Mikey watches with horrified fascination, slim tendrils crawl up over his ankles to curl tightly around his calves and creep up his thighs, firmly anchoring him in place.

“No,” Mikey whispers, more a horrified breath than a real word, and he reaches down, desperately trying to push the tendrils away. They’re slippery, greasy and dirty against his fingertips, and they arch away from his thighs seemingly in response to his movements to capture his hands and wrists in a vice-like grip that he can’t pull away from, despite the oily, viscous feel of them.

“Yes,” the not-Gerard says, almost triumphantly, and Mikey’s next breath chokes out as a sob. “Now we finish.”

He looks up again to find the not-Gerard watching him, it’s starry eyes intently bright and Mikey’s vision swims as his headache returns full force. Mikey can’t move, locked into place by the tendrils which continue to solidify their hold as they wrap around his thighs and over his hips and all he can do is watch as the not-Gerard turns away (the pounding is his head eases again once the full force of its stare isn’t directed at him, and Mikey might need to put that away to think about later, assuming that he gets to have a later and, god, he _really_ wants to talk to _Gerard_ about this). The not-Gerard holds out its hands, fingers splayed wide, and Mikey watches with growing horror as thin bone shards sprout from the tips of the not-Gerard’s forefingers. The not-Gerard reaches up, plucking a single strand of hair from its head as it stumble-shuffles back to Gerard’s desk. Once there, it hunches over again, clearly examining something before it starts to mutter again. A moment later that arrhythmic _click-clack_ resumes.

Mikey still can’t hear the words, but they sound wrong; like a bass out of tune, or a drumbeat out of time. It’s a dissonance that’s almost painful, not unlike nails scraped down a chalkboard and it’s only a few seconds before Mikey’s teeth start to ache. He shakes his head, clenching his jaw in a desperate attempt at relief, but the feeling doesn’t dissipate. If anything, it gets worse, and there’s a heavy buzz that sets up residence in the back of Mikey’s brain, constant and thrumming in a way that nothing else in the room is.

It isn’t until Mikey’s ears pop that he realises how the pressure in the room is growing, building toward something he doesn’t want to imagine (although his treacherous brain is happy to try and fill in the blanks for him and he’s trying really hard to ignore that as well). The not-Gerard’s muttering gets faster, although not any less unnatural, and the buzz shifts; from a throb, through an ache to a stabbing burn in both of his ears. Mikey tugs ineffectually at the carpet tendrils, suddenly desperate to do something, _anything_, that might make it _stop_ but they hold firm.

He’s not sure if that’s a bad thing.

And then finally, just as it reaches the point of being unbearable, it does stop. Mikey had almost been expecting something dramatic – the air to boom or the room to shake, maybe, but there’s nothing like that. Just a soft whoosh from where the not-Gerard is hunched over and, just like that, that not-Gerard falls silent and the pressure drops. The pain in his ears ebbs away, the room falls silent, and the only thing Mikey can hear is the over-harsh rasp of his own, slightly panicky breathing.

He has no idea what just happened, but he’s prepared to bet a month’s remote privileges that it isn’t anything good.

(He really, _really_ wishes Gerard was here to take that bet. Except that he’d actually really rather they were both _somewhere else_).

The not-Gerard turns back to face him, the intensity of its gaze shifting back to Mikey’s face, and pain explodes in a starburst behind Mikey’s eyes. It steps forward, it’s lurching gait bringing it to stand just in front of Mikey. It lifts one hand (Mikey’s absurdly grateful that the bone spur, at least, has disappeared without a trace) and then stops, holding its fingers still a few centimetres away from Mikey’s cheek

It's going to touch him, Mikey realises, and his stomach churns uncomfortably. The not-Gerard is going to put its hands on him and he doesn’t know why; he doesn’t want to know but he does know that he doesn’t want its touch. Mikey has listened to enough of Gerard’s stories over the years to know the not-Gerard’s touch, the not-Gerard’s _attention_ is something he desperately needs to avoid if he wants any chance of survival (he can imagine Frankie rolling his eyes about now, and Ray pointing out, not unkindly, that those are just _stories_, Mikey, it’s not like that in the real world. Mikey might feel more reassured about stories if it didn’t seem like he was living in one).

“Now,” the not-Gerard says. “_Now_ there is time for a Mikey Way.” 

It smiles at him, and something bubbles up in Mikey’s chest and bursts out as a half-strangled whimper. Mikey knows Gerard’s smile, _all_ of Gerard’s smiles, and _this_ is not one of them. The not-Gerard stretches Gerard’s mouth unnaturally; its smile a gross parody of any expression Mikey might actually expect to see on his brother’s face, and he can’t help but imagine the mewling, crawling, creeping things that are hiding behind those closed teeth.

Its finger brushes against the soft skin underneath his right ear and Mikey shivers, his shake intensifying into a shudder when he sees its finger come away red with his blood. The not-Gerard slides its finger between its lips and sucks, drawing back out slowly enough for it to break free with a lewd pop. It tips its head to one side thoughtfully, and those over-bright eyes fix on Mikey’s face, amplifying his headache to something almost unbearable.

“You taste of the space between stars, Mikey Way,” it says, and Mikey blinks.

“I don’t understand,” he says, because he’s not sure what else he should say in a situation like this, because it’s better than thinking about what the not-Gerard just did with his _blood_.

“You are small,” the not-Gerard says; in agreement, Mikey thinks. “But we will show you. You will come with us to the between.”

It doesn’t give Mikey a chance to ask what _that_ means before it lets its jaw drop, wide and then impossibly wider. Much further than Gerard would have been able, and more than enough for Mikey to be able to see into its mouth. To catch his first sight of the thing that is lurking behind the façade of his brother’s face.

Mikey can’t help it. He screams.

He’s still screaming when the world goes dark.


End file.
